


The Trollop and a Damned Fool

by Lenny9987



Series: Lenny's Imagine Claire and Jamie Prompts [37]
Category: Outlander (TV)
Genre: Other, Outlander 01x12 Lallybroch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-17 20:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenny9987/pseuds/Lenny9987
Summary: Prompt: I'd love to see anything from Jenny's POV from when Claire and Jaime first came to Lallybroch.





	The Trollop and a Damned Fool

She was constantly looking around her skirts and shifting the basket of laundry from one hip to the other in an effort to keep from stepping on her son. He giggled finding it a fun game to play. The child in her womb seemed eager to join his brother’s fun and repeatedly kicked her in the side. Jenny was about ready to have the child out if only so she could see her feet again and stop worrying about tripping over things. It would be a year or more before he’d be a suitable playmate for his older brother and she’d be left in relative peace to her daily chores. How her own mother had managed Willie before she and Jamie came along, she’d never know.

She watched her son as he ran ahead around the corner of the house and into the main yard. She called after him but got no response. He looked more like her, like Ian but he certainly had a flair for mischief that put her in mind of his namesake more often than not. Lord, that she and Ian would be spared the worst of what Jamie had put their parents through––no, not their parents so much as her. Their father had to watch what the English did to Jamie but he hadn’t had to endure the waiting and the not knowing the way she had. Her brother hadn’t even come all the way home to Lallybroch with Ian after the injury that took his leg in France. His trunk had arrived from Leoch a few days earlier and they didn’t know if he’d sent it for safe keeping or if it had simply been passed along because he was dead––she wanted to think that her uncles would have written something if that were the case so she continued to hope for the best. 

Jenny turned the corner into the yard and forced herself to look at the stone archway. It was where she nearly always saw her brother as she had last seen him, his arms raised and pulled by ropes to a point that must have been painful, his back bare and streaked with red stripes from where Captain Randall had lashed him with the horse whip. On bad days she saw Jamie’s head hanging forward, limp, and the strain in his shoulders from having passed out after Randall’s blow to his head. 

This time though, Jamie was standing in the archway with a horse beside him, his shirt and jacket on and a quiet smile on his face as he looked at something in the yard. Then he spotted her. His smile flashed bright for a moment and it was enough to give Jenny a jolt, to have her throw down the basket of laundry and lift her skirts enough to waddle over as fast as her ungainly body would allow. Even as she threw her arms around him and breathed in the stink of sweat and dust and horse, she had a difficult time believing it was really him. 

Holding him and holding back tears, Jenny was aware of someone else in the yard with them, of a stiffness in Jamie. She pulled back and smiled at him, glanced over her shoulder to where his gaze had drifted a moment before.

There was a woman with him. Her dark, curly hair was loose about her shoulders and she was swathed in Jamie’s plaid. The young boy had been distracted by the pretty stranger and her attention to him, but seeing his mother’s reaction to the taller, broader stranger, he abandoned the woman to investigate and be closer to Jenny’s reassuring presence.

Though Jenny was inclined to cry or scold her brother for his long absence, for her son’s sake she kept her tone light and teasing. 

“Four years and no word.” She knew Jamie would understand what she was getting after, would apologize and explain. 

He looked about to speak but glancing down at the boy, he stopped.

“This is my wee Jamie,” she told him, taking her son’s hand and giving it a playful squeeze. The lad was grinning with curiosity and self-importance over the introduction but remained quiet. “This is your uncle,  _ mo chridhe _ ,” she said. “The one you were named after.”

Wee Jamie remained shy while the older Jamie was less than amused.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why would ye name him after me?”

A niggling fear began to squirm in her stomach beside the wriggling bairn. 

“What’s wrong,  _ a graidh _ ? Are you ill?” She meant it to be teasing but the pain of disappointment was working its way into her bones. Four years she’d waited and prayed for Jamie to come home, to have more than just out-dated scraps of gossip about how he fared. Four years of yearning to see him safe and whole with her own eyes. And he couldn’t let her enjoy it for five minutes. 

“Did ye not think I’d suffered enough for what I let happen, that… ye must name Randall’s bastard after me…”

That word and the way he looked at her son––the disgust and the shame… She remembered the fear and the joy of carrying the lad, the uncertainty and doubt as she tried to remember her mother carrying Jamie but only really remembering the details of that last fatal pregnancy and delivery. She remembered the relief and the joy of holding her baby for the first time and knowing they’d both live.

“…to be a reproach as long as I live?”

“Randall’s bastard? Jack Randall, ye mean, the Redcoat captain?” she clarified.

She needed to get the lad away. She was afraid she’d throttle her brother then and there and if she did, it wasn’t something she wanted him to see. He’d already heard more than he should. 

“Go find Mrs. Crook my wee man,” she told him. Young Jamie dutifully ran off, perhaps sensing what was coming. 

“Correct me, brother, if I’m wrong,” Jenny began, easily slipping into the tone of authority she’d started using with him even before their mother’s death. “But I’ve a strong impression you’re saying that I played the hoor to Captain Randall.”

Jamie didn’t heed her tone, just kept barrelling forward carried by his wave of misplaced shame and anger.

“I’d rather I was dead in my grave than see my sister brought to such…” 

If he wished he was dead just then, Jenny was starting to feel more than happy to oblige. She thought of all the nights she’d prayed for him, for his safety; all the nights she wondered what it was that kept him away. She struggled to remember that feeling of worry and concern and used it to keep herself from reaching out and wringing his neck as he continued with a nod to her belly.

“And whose is this one? To have ye ruin yerself for me was shame enough but… another one?”

Jenny felt the bairn kick hard, making its offense known.

“With no father to give him a name. We shouldn’t have come,” he told the woman who looked taken aback by Jamie’s anger––though not entirely surprised. 

The woman spoke up then, the first Jenny had truly heard her and the sound of her voice made Jenny’s blood boil over––she was English.

“Jamie, perhaps we should all go inside––”

“Tell that trollop to keep her neb out of my business,” Jenny burst. She would  _ not _ be told what to do by anyone English, especially not where it concerned her own home. What was Jamie thinking, bringing her here?

“She’s my wife and ye’ll speak of her with respect,” Jamie scolded, even more infuriated.

Jamie had married––he had married and still sent no word. Though, marrying an Englishwoman, perhaps he’d thought better of it. After all the English had done to him, to their family…

“Jamie, please,” his wife pled.

Jamie turned to leave and Jenny saw him walking away, passing through the gate and this time and never coming back. She couldn’t bear the thought––not as much for herself as for their father, who had followed Jamie to Fort William for Jamie and come back irreparably broken, and Jamie hadn’t even seen his grave yet. She impulsively reached out and grabbed Jamie’s arm causing him to spin around in a fury. 

“Do I have to do what I did when we were bairns?” Jenny challenged. “Grab ye by the bollocks to make you stand still and listen to me?”

“Are you now trying to shame me in front of my own wife?” he sneered.

Who was he trying to impress with his absurd display?

“Well if she’s yer wife I imagine she’s more familiar with yer balls than I am.”

That shocked him into silence long enough for her to give him a proper scolding.

“Don’t test me, brother,” she warned, crossing her arms and resting them on the swell of her belly. She took a deep, shuddering breath summoning with it the fear and worry that had lived in her every day since he’d left. It was the only way to keep the anger from taking over completely. “Last I saw you… bloodied and broken, strung up by yer wrists in that archway and then leaving me to think ye’re dead or certain never to return again and  _ this _ is how ye come home?”

She heard the steady beat of Ian’s approach and it helped to cool her anger but also cemented the hurt of her brother’s words.

“Whose child is the boy?” Jamie demanded.

“Mine,” Ian spoke up with pride and amusement––damn him. “And that one too.”

The change in Jamie’s face was immediate. He would believe his childhood friend in a heartbeat but otherwise was more than willing to think the worst of her? Would argue and talk over her and haver with no intention of listening to anything she had to say?

“Ian?”

“Yer brother-in-law,” Jenny said with a glare of resentment.

“It’s good to see ye, Jamie,” Ian said. “Ye always knew how to make an entrance.” Ian gave her a brief glance to be sure she was all right, took in the set of her jaw and arms, and smiled more broadly to Jamie but Jenny could see his concern for her underneath it all. “We thought ye were dead until we received yer chest from Castle Leoch.” It was said gently but Jamie wouldn’t miss Ian’s reproach.

Jamie gave Jenny a brief look like he was finally seeing her rather than whoever it was he’d been arguing with moments before. It wasn’t sheepish or apologetic enough for Jenny with so many varieties of hurt still so close to the surface. Jamie turned back to Ian, smiling and laughing and ready for a welcoming brotherly embrace. 

“And this would be…?” Ian nodded to the woman standing off to Jenny’s side.

“The trollop,” the woman retorted. “Otherwise known as Claire Fraser.”

With those formal introductions out of the way and Ian’s gentle assertion of the truth, Jamie finally turned to Jenny again, ready to offer an apology. Too little, too late.

“Jenny… I–I’m…”

“A damned fool,” she answered for him. “And no a day wiser in four years.”

She needed to get away. She didn’t want that Englishwoman––her sister-in-law––staring at her and judging her. She needed to recover and rest after that scene in the yard. And to let Mrs. Crook know they’d be needing more for supper and that room would need to be found for the Laird and his Lady… 

Without another word, Jenny turned and went back to the house, leaving the discarded laundry basket on the ground for someone else to retrieve––she didn’t need to be bending over in her condition.

Once inside, she didn’t head to the kitchen or seek out any of the maids. She found her steps taking her to the study. 

It had once been their father’s and Ian had been using it in Jamie’s prolonged absence. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it before finally bursting into tears––of relief, of anger, of frustration and hurt.

Jamie was finally home. 


End file.
